On Oct 17, three women received their upasampada ordination at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Woodacre, California

Navaka Bhikkhunīs Ānandabodhī and Santacittā are the principle teachers at the Aloka Vihara in San Francisco. They had previously trained with the Siladhara. During this past Vassa, they had regularly visited the Aranya Bodhi Hermitage for vinaya training with Ayyā Tathālokā, which will continue.

Navaka Bhikkhuni Nimmalā has trained with Ayya Medhānandī at the Sati Saraniya Hermitage in Ontario, Canada, where she will return.

It was quite a large gathering, including senior lay teachers from Spirit Rock, and monastics from the Zen, Chinese Mahāyāna, Tibetan and Catholic traditions. Spirit Rock has expressed its very sincere support for the fourfold sangha, both in supporting women's ordination, and integrating itself with the monastic sangha. For a long time, they have invited teachers from Abhayagiri and other monastics. In the run-up to this ordination, we established an ordination sima within their main hall.

Congratulatory messages were given by Bhikkhu Bodhi (via recording) and Bhikkhu Analayo.

I am pasting in the names of the ordaining sangha, for everyone's information. It was done by an act of the Dual Sangha consisting of a Theravāda Bhikkhunī Sangha led by Ayyā Tathāālokā Therī as Pavattinī (Upajjhā), and a Theravāda Bhikkhu Sangha led by Bhante Pallewela Rāhula Mahāthera as Ovadakacāriya. In addition to the Theravada sangha, several Bhikṣus / Bhikṣunīs from the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna schools were invited to participate as witnesses.

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of the four establishments of mindfulness. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others.

"And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, goodwill, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.- Sedaka Sutta [SN 47.19]